With this strategy, it is a lot easier to stay focused, reach a conclusion, and come up with the next steps.

Here is a system that I’ve been using for holding office hours at Techstars that works remarkably well. Divide a chunk of your calendar into time slots of 20 minutes each, and allow people to book you for 20, 40, or 60 minutes.

The key — only 1 topic is allowed regardless of how much time is booked, so it is up to whoever is booking to think through how much time is needed.

4. Always have an agenda, and plan time per topic

For most internal meetings you can actually have 1 topic per meeting, but this strategy doesn’t work with, for example, board meetings.

In the event you must have a longer meeting, set the agenda and set the time allowed to discuss each topic on the agenda.

Unless you do that there is a chance that a topic will drag on and you will never get to other topics. As a result the whole meeting may run over, and attendees may leave feeling unproductive.

If you are out of time, sum up the takeaways and schedule a follow up. Don’t spend more time than you are budgeted.

5. Prepare and send materials in advance

Meetings are remarkably unproductive when people aren’t prepared.

Getting everyone prepared is difficult, because it involves asking for more time.

For example, if you are running a board meeting, it is much better to send materials ahead of time so that the board members have time to review.

Another great strategy that Jeff Bezos introduced at Amazon is to set aside time at the beginning of the meeting to review the materials. Either way, people need to invest more time to prepare to be productive in the meeting.

It is also helpful to ask people to write stuff down ahead of time. This way everyone can think things through and really prepare. The culture of writing things down is an effective tool, and helps avoid wasting time.

6. Summarize each meeting, and next steps

Set aside the last 5 minutes of the meeting to summarize what was said, and map out the next steps. Unless you do this, people will walk away from the meeting without a sense of progress and with the sense that time was wasted.

If there is a follow-up meeting, be clear on what the topic / agenda will be and who is responsible, and communicate this to everyone. This way people will feel engaged, have a positive attitude, and feel like the team is making progress instead of feeling like their time was wasted.

7. End calls and meetings early and give time back

One of the most wonderful things you can do during a meeting or a call is to end it early.

If there is nothing to discuss, if you got through everything, then wrap it up. Say, “We are done, I am giving you (however many) minutes back.”

Get into the habit of doing that and people will LOVE you.

I make a point of repeating this a lot during the Techstars program – I am giving you time back. I am respectful of and grateful for your time. By doing so, I hope that founders will start respecting their time, my time, and other people’s time more.

8. Don’t be late

This is an obvious one, but it is important.

People who are constantly late aren’t aware that they waste other people’s time. There is no situation or reason why this would be okay.

If you happen to be late, always apologize and make it clear that you respect the other person’s time. This may seem like a small thing, but it really matters.

9. Don’t cancel or reschedule last minute

Another pet peeve is cancelling the meeting last minute or on the same day. I am guilty of doing this a few times myself, and it is really bad.

Canceling last minute is especially unacceptable if the person has to travel to meet with you, because you have just potentially wasted hours of their time.

If the meeting is a call or a Google hangout, cancelling last minute isn’t ideal, but is not as bad, since technically you are giving the person time back. Still, it is not great because it throws people’s plans and routine off.

10. Don’t ask for last-minute meetings

I’ve written a whole post about this topic. When you ping people last minute and ask to meet, it creates a bad vibe.

First of all, people most likely already have plans, so by reaching out to them last minute, you are implying that they aren’t busy.

More importantly, these unplanned meetings are rarely as productive. This is particularly true if the meeting is meant to be a working session, or there are specific asks. Last- minute meetings aren’t great because the other person doesn’t have the context and isn’t prepared.

I find with our early stage founding team, we can all move so fast that we miss checking in on how everyone is doing. I do 10 min 1:1’s every Tuesday that are only focused on how the individual is feeling/doing personally & professionally. They are not allowed to update me on specific tasks/projects.

This helps to make all other team meetings super focused on the results we want rather than chit chatting, plus it allows every single person to be heard and receive personal feedback during a dedicated time.

This is amazing! I read this a day ago, and already implemented #8 when I was a few minutes late to a meeting. #11 inspired me to add a few others to our slack channel

One of my favorite time-management techniques is to answer unplanned calls with, “Hey, I’m just about to step into a meeting, what’s up?” and then telling them I have a 2 minutes if they offer to call back when I have more time.